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FW: US Government Policy on Scientific Collections
by Weitzman, Anna 20 Oct '10

20 Oct '10

Forwarding as this may be of interest outside the US. A new policy on scientific collections has been issued by Dr. John Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. This builds on the work of the Interagency Working Group on Scientific Collections (IWGSC), and in setting targets for the ongoing work of the IWGSC and federal agencies, further raises the profile of scientific collections. The policy can be found on the OSTP website: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/ostp-2010-sci… On the international scene, the organization of the International Scientific Collections initiative (SciColl) under the auspices of the OECD Global Science Forum continues. Watch for announcements from this group soon. More information can be found at http://www.scicoll.org Both IWGSC and SciColl are looking forward to working with the broader scientific collections communities in implementing their goals. Scott Miller Co-chair, IWGSC Deputy Under Secretary for Science, Smithsonian Institution

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EOL Rubenstein Fellows Competition - deadline 30 Sept 2010
by Gail Kampmeier 14 Sep '10

14 Sep '10

EOL Rubenstein Fellows Competition Richard Allen, a Presidential Management Fellow with the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) working out of the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, contacted me to help spread the word about an opportunity for early career folks and mentors in the EOL Rubenstein Fellows Competition http://www.eol.org/content/page/fellows, whose deadline has been extended to 30 Sept. 2010. Please help spread the word to those who might be interested in this great opportunity! AND Reviewers Needed Tanya Dewey, the Fellows Coordinator, is also looking for reviewers of the applications in the following disciplines: conservation biology invasive species fungi insects arachnids bacteria protozoa fish (bony, lobe-finned, sharks and rays, anything!) crustaceans algae cnidarians sponges or, basically, any invertebrate group! Reviewer commitment would be to review up to 10 proposals and provide comments. Proposals are 2 pages plus supporting documents and the reviews would take place in October. Selection Committee If you would like to be on the selection committee, a bit more work would be involved, requiring more reviews and a half day meeting to make final decisions. Contact Tanya for additional information tdewey(a)eol.org. I hope you will consider encouraging a promising young professional to apply for this fellowship and/or volunteer to take part in the review process! Cheers! Gail +++++++ If you build castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. Henry David Thoreau Gail E. Kampmeier Illinois Natural History Survey Institute of Natural Resource Sustainability University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign +++++++

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GBIF Knowledge Organization survey
by Bob Morris 08 Sep '10

08 Sep '10

An earlier somewhat erroneous, version of this escaped to tdwg(a)lists.tdwg.org. If you are forwarding it, please use this one. Apologies for deluging you....Bob Morris Dear colleague, The team listed below is charged by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) with developing a position paper about its future needs for Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS), a rubric which includes thesauri, controlled vocabularies, ontologies, gazetteers, and other such resources. The paper will cover tools, impediments to deployment, training requirements, etc. After we draft it, the position paper will be put forth for a period of public comment before final recommendations to GBIF. In order to put together the position paper, we solicit opinions, experiences, needs, and resources already in place about Knowledge Organization for biodiversity research. Please go to http://surveymonkey.com/GBIFKOSurvey to participate in the survey. We especially value your input about points you feel the survey doesn’t cover. Please feel free to forward this invitation to colleagues or mailing lists you think relevant, hopefully to people who may not have seen it already. Thanks GBIF KOS position paper team Bob Morris, Convenor, Terry Catapano, Donald Hobern, Hilmar Lapp, Norman Morrison, Natasha Noy, Mark Schildhauer, Dave Thau September 7, 2010 -- Robert A. Morris Emeritus Professor of Computer Science UMASS-Boston 100 Morrissey Blvd Boston, MA 02125-3390 Associate, Harvard University Herbaria email: morris.bob(a)gmail.com web: http://bdei.cs.umb.edu/ web: http://etaxonomy.org/mw/FilteredPush http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram phone (+1) 857 222 7992 (mobile)

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Survey on biodiversity Knowledge Organization
by Bob Morris 08 Sep '10

08 Sep '10

Dear colleague, The team listed below is charged by the Global Biological Information Facility (GBIF) with developing a position paper about its future needs for Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS), a rubric which includes thesauri, controlled vocabularies, ontologies, gazetteers, and other such resources. The paper will cover tools, impediments to deployment, training requirements, etc. After we draft it, the position paper will be put forth for a period of public comment before final recommendations to GBIF. In order to put together the position paper, we solicit opinions, experiences, needs, and resources already in place about Knowledge Organization for biodiversity research. Please go to http://surveymonkey.com/GBIFKOSurvey to participate in the survey. We especially value your input about points you feel the survey doesn’t cover. Please feel free to forward this invitation to colleagues or mailing lists you think relevant, hopefully to people who may not have seen it already. Thanks GBIF KOS position paper team Bob Morris, Convenor, Terry Catapano, Donald Hobern, Hilmar Lapp, Norman Morrison, Natasha Noy, Mark Schildhauer, Dave Thau September 7, 2010 -- Robert A. Morris Emeritus Professor of Computer Science UMASS-Boston 100 Morrissey Blvd Boston, MA 02125-3390 Associate, Harvard University Herbaria email: morris.bob(a)gmail.com web: http://bdei.cs.umb.edu/ web: http://etaxonomy.org/mw/FilteredPush http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram phone (+1) 857 222 7992 (mobile)

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Upcoming TDWG meeting
by Nico Cellinese 27 Aug '10

27 Aug '10

Hi all, we have reserved one full day for a Phylogenetics Standards hands-on activity at the upcoming TDWG conference. We asked for power strips and wireless network and tables that we can sit around and work together. The only thing that's missing right now is what exactly we should target. The options are wide open right now, with the two only major constraints being that (a) we have no funding this year to bring people in who wouldn't otherwise be there, and (b) abstract submission deadline is next Wednesday. Any feedback or ideas, wild or not, that you have would be welcome - send those our way. And BTW currently this workshops seems to be placed on the Wednesday of the conference week, so those of you blitzing the local biosphere will unfortunately have a conflict. Cheers, Nico & Hilmar <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> Nico Cellinese, Ph.D. Assistant Curator, Herbarium & Informatics Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Biology Florida Museum of Natural History University of Florida 354 Dickinson Hall, PO Box 117800 Gainesville, FL 32611-7800, U.S.A. Tel. 352-273-1979 Fax 352-846-1861 http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu

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[TDWG 2010] Biofinity workshop immediately following TDWG
by Stephen D. Scott 24 Aug '10

24 Aug '10

The Second Bionfinity Project Annual Workshop will be held on October 1-2, directly following TDWG'2010, at Speck Lecture Hall. We will be discussing how to use our next-generation Biofinity tools and how they can be adapted to improve bioinformatics research. On Friday, starting at 2:00 p.m., we will present two Biofinity use cases with live demos on biological research data curation, analysis, and discovery. These presentations will be followed by a discussion forum to discuss additional Biofinity features and address potential user needs. We hope to have a lively discussion and obtain insightful feedback from the partipants. To conclude the first day, we will host a dinner and a mixer. On Saturday, starting at 8:00 with breakfast, we will give two tutorials and demos on how to set up lab accounts on Biofinity and use Biofinity for a variety of data analysis tasks. To conclude the second day, we will host a lunch. The workshop is free of charge and all means and meals and refreshments will be provided. For more information on our project, see http://biofinity.unl.edu/info/ For information on Biofinity's use in TDWG BioBlitz or to register for our workshop, please visit our project website at http://biofinity.unl.edu Stephen Scott -- Stephen D. Scott Dept. of Computer Science & Engr. Associate Professor & Vice Chair University of Nebraska Avery 268 Lincoln, NE 68588-0115 sscott(a)cse.unl.edu http://www.cse.unl.edu/~sscott/

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EoL
by Lee Belbin 21 Aug '10

21 Aug '10

After a successful private beta, the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) development team is ready to open up testing of the new (and improved) EOL API to a larger community of testers in advance of its general release. The testing period will run from August 12 to September 2. If you would like to participate in this beta program, please review the terms of the beta test at http://www.eol.org/content/page/beta_api. From this page, you will be able to access API documentation, review test plans and provide feedback. If you have questions about the beta test, or would like to open a direct line of communication to the EOL development team, please contact us at api(a)eol.org. Please share this message as you see fit. Thank you in advance for your contributions. We are looking forward to working with you! Best regards, Kristen Lans Project Coordinator Encyclopedia of Life Biodiversity Informatics Group - Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA Lee Belbin Team Leader Geospatial Data Management Atlas of Living Australia

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Informatics job opportunities at Natural History Museum, London
by Vincent Smith 18 Aug '10

18 Aug '10

Dear Colleagues, We seek two Drupal developers (one junior and one senior position) for 3-year (full-time) posts at the Natural History Museum London, as part of a major collaborative effort to help researchers share and manage biodiversity data on the Web (http://scratchpads.eu/) The work will include design and implementation of web applications, web services, data schemas and other applications and services. The junior position includes mentored training and is focused on the development of content, theming and enhanced functionality for new and existing PHP and Drupal systems and applications (see http://scratchpads.eu/junior-drupal-developer) The senior position is Drupal design orientated and requires implementation of web applications, web services, data schemas and related applications and services (see http://scratchpads.eu/senior-drupal-developer) The anticipated start date for both positions is December 1st 2010. Salary will be commensurate with experience from £25k and £33k plus benefits for the junior and senior posts respectively. These positions are supported by the EU FP7 funded ViBRANT project (http://vbrant.eu/) and the NERC funded e-Monocot project (http://e-monocot.org/) Applications should be made online at http://www.nhm.ac.uk/jobs by the closing date of 10th September, quoting reference "NHM/JDD/GS" for the junior position and "NHM/SDD/GS" for the senior post. Further information is available from the websites quoted above, or by contacting Vince Smith (vince(a)vsmith.info) Best regards, Vince Smith -- Dr. Vincent S. Smith Cybertaxonomist, The Natural History Museum Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD, UK Web: http://vsmith.info/ E-mail: vince(a)vsmith.info (preferred) Tel: +44 (0) 207 942 5127, Fax: +44 (0) 207 942 5229 Skype: vsmithuk; XMPP/Jabber: vince(a)vsmith.info

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GBIF beginner's guide to persistent identifiers - call for comments on draft document
by Éamonn Ó Tuama (GBIF) 16 Aug '10

16 Aug '10

In May 2010, GBIF issued a call for proposals to draft a GBIF Beginner's guide to issuing persistent identifiers for biodiversity resources (see: <http://www.gbif.org/communications/news-and-events/showsingle/article/reque st-for-proposals-to-draft-gbif-booklet/> http://www.gbif.org/communications/news-and-events/showsingle/article/reques t-for-proposals-to-draft-gbif-booklet/). The contract was subsequently awarded to a team coordinated by Kevin Richards (Landcare Research, New Zealand) and the first draft of the guide is now available for community consultation/comment. You are invited to review (or circulate for review to interested colleagues) the draft document available for download here: http://community.gbif.org/pg/file/eotuama/read/8160/. Please return your comments to the authors using the following email address: PID-Guide-Feedback(a)gbif.org. All comments will be considered by the authors and, where appropriate, will inform the final version of the guide to be released in October 2010. The closing date for receipt of comments is 30th September 2010. With regards, Éamonn Ó Tuama _______________________________________________ Éamonn Ó Tuama, M.Sc., Ph.D. (eotuama(a)gbif.org) Senior Programme Officer, Inventory, Discovery, Access (IDA), Global Biodiversity Information Facility Secretariat, Universitetsparken 15, DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø, DENMARK Phone: +45 3532 1494; Fax: +45 3532 1480

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TDWG 2010
by Lee Belbin 14 Aug '10

14 Aug '10

>From the Local Organizing Committee for TDWG 2010: "It might be important to let TDWG'ers know that the hotel blocks are valid until August 15, with the exception of the Holiday Inn, which is blocked until August 30 (but is furthest from the venue). See <http://www.tdwg.org/conference2010/accommodation> http://www.tdwg.org/conference2010/accommodation for more information about conference lodging." Info about the TDWG 2010 BioBlitz is now available at http://wiki.tdwg.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/BioBlitz2010. Information about the CodeBlitz (Wednesday-Thursday) will soon be available. Cheers Lee Lee Belbin TDWG Secretariat

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